I woke up late today. Anyways, LEGO CUUSOO posted their announcement video about an hour ago and the newest CUUSOO product will be 21103 Back to the Future Time Machine. No on-sale date or other item details have been released. I expect that information to come out sometime in January. The builders behind the project have decided to donate the 1% royalty they would have gained to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. How awesome is that?

To be honest I am disappointed with this. While I know many are excited by the results I'm meh on this one. In the bigger picture I don't know if this bodes well for larger projects. All of the Cuusoo sets have been small/ medium sized sets. I really don't think that the Lone Ranger had much to do with the western towns rejection but I think it was based on the size and production constraints to get it out by summer. If it were a liscense issue than we probably wouldn't be getting new castle sets with Hobbit sets out. Also the Eve was rejected which was a larger set. The point that I'm getting at here is that I am really hoping for the UCS sandcrawler but my hopes are fading with these recent results and feel that in the next round it will be the Mars rover which seems to be more in the size and scale they are looking at. That would be a great set but the sandcrawler and jawa could pick it up and sell it for parts. Let's go sandcrawler.

Sounds great, I'll probably get this assuming the final model is decent enough.

I didn't know about the 1% commission thing for Cuusoo ... it's a nice touch that they're donating it. It would've been a nicer touch if Lego themselves had sacrificed a bit of their profit margin to bump that up a bit more though.

Last edited by bigospedros on Thu Dec 20, 2012 9:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

Is this a competition now? Those in each review having to battle each other for one to be chosen as best? This sucks if so. This means prepare next round for a Mars rover and no sand crawler (too big), no portals (too many new molds?). I don't care much for a delorean. It didn't look all that different from tons of other cars we've gotten so far. All that is different is its a official delorean. woopie. Not that exciting as a builder. The eve Rifter was nice even having not played the game before. It would of been nice to have gotten a more modestly designed ship that was not star wars. Zelda is not surprising, but would of made for good figures I would have bought. The western town could of happened. The Saloon could of been to Lone Rangers as the Haunted House was to Monster Fighters. With a limited run on sets and keeping to molds already in use I do not see how this set could not of happened. A little more explanation would be nice. Not really excited anymore about Cuusoo. I think I'm done putting any effort to get nice looking sets voted up.

JohnSB wrote:Is this a competition now? Those in each review having to battle each other for one to be chosen as best? This sucks if so. This means prepare next round for a Mars rover and no sand crawler (too big), no portals (too many new molds?). I don't care much for a delorean. It didn't look all that different from tons of other cars we've gotten so far. All that is different is its a official delorean. woopie. Not that exciting as a builder. The eve Rifter was nice even having not played the game before. It would of been nice to have gotten a more modestly designed ship that was not star wars. Zelda is not surprising, but would of made for good figures I would have bought. The western town could of happened. The Saloon could of been to Lone Rangers as the Haunted House was to Monster Fighters. With a limited run on sets and keeping to molds already in use I do not see how this set could not of happened. A little more explanation would be nice. Not really excited anymore about Cuusoo. I think I'm done putting any effort to get nice looking sets voted up.

i don't think the western modular buildings was disapproved solely based on the lone ranger theme. you have to keep in mind that the project wasn't just a building, it was a whole system of buildings which more or less defines a whole new theme, and that isn't what cuusoo is about. it's about one-off products that fans want to see. and then once a project reaches the support it needs to enter review phase, lego still has to consider its economic feasibility. just because a project gets supported doesn't mean lego is under any obligation to produce the set. it has to make sense for everyone.

sure it's disappointing to think that we won't get the sandcrawler, but i'd rather have cuusoo do one or two cool things than not have it around at all.

I don't understand how Cuusoo works for sets that were probably already on Lego's radar despite them being submitted by people. For example, while that sandcrawler is absolutely incredible, surely Lego will at some point make a UCS version with or without Cuusoo. If and when they do, would they have to give the creator of the existing one 1% of the proceeds? There's only a finite number of potential Star Wars UCS sets that can be made, and I bet they've all been submitted on Cuusoo. I do hope they bring out a Sandcrawler at some point as it could be an awesome $500 set, and would make a change from the predominantly grey bricks of all the previous UCS models.